Staying with a host family has been so much fun. Not only have I been able to spend some time during the week with them, I’ve also been able to spend the weekend with them. My family always takes a trip on the weekend. Always. Not a big trip to another city or anything, but every weekend we go for a hike or a bike ride. Going on these hikes with them is one of my favorite parts of having a host family.

The first weekend we went to the beautiful mountain river canyon called Cheile Buţii. Since we hadn’t done anything like this yet, I had no idea what to expect. I certainly wasn’t expecting a two mile hike up a canyon that ended in a fun little cave. At first, I thought the hike was over when the path ended at the river. Nope, we went on stepping stones onto the river and kept going. Sometimes there was part of a path, but most often we were climbing over or jumping to different rocks that made our path. Along the way we saw numerous little waterfalls that had created perfectly blue pools that I was tempted to jump into, just to see if the water was as perfect as it looked. It was really fun. We didn’t rush or have any hurry to do more than just enjoy the views. That we had a three and a five year old with us also ensured that we were going nowhere fast. I was surprised by how well they kept up with the adults. Once I realized that they did something like this every week I was able to see how the adults were so casual about doing something like taking a two mile hike up a river, they had probably been doing it since they were kids. That was only the first of a series of trips to explore the beautiful countryside that surrounds Lupeni.